The Pottery Class

Create a lace-effect ceramic vessel based on Orleans House Gallery. Work with clay and explore different cutting, perforating, and glazing techniques throughout this five week course. A week after the last session your art piece will be ready for collection from the gallery.

Suitable for artists of all levels, including beginners. All materials are included.

Maureen Farr with Celia Lewis

Hogarth's Progress

Set in an imagined version of eighteenth century London, Hogarth’s Progress is a riotous double bill of plays following one of Britain’s most celebrated artists on two spectacularly wild days and nights – one at the beginning of his career and one at the end.

The plays explore the extraordinary life of William Hogarth and the commercialisation of art in a time that saw British culture spring from the drawing rooms of the wealthy into ordinary houses across the country. Filled with political satire, boisterous romps and sleazy characters, Hogarth’s Progress promises to be an extraordinary theatrical event not to be missed.

The double bill begins with the first major revival of The Art of Success, which was first performed by the RSC in 1986 before transferring to the Barbican and New York. Compressing the artist’s ascent to fame into a single, action-filled night, Dear follows a larger-than-life Hogarth as he mingles with famous playwrights and artists, royalty and prostitutes, prime ministers and murderesses creating an exceedingly imaginative, thoroughly scurrilous, but nonetheless highly entertaining portrait of a world on the brink of transformation. The second play, The Taste of the Town, catches up with Hogarth 30 years later, finding him now hugely successful, yet still at odds with the world and with himself. Old and tired he may be, but there’s always time for one more fight.

Red Riding Hood

The much-loved story of Little Red Riding Hood is given a new and humorous twist in the tale, in this specially commissioned version by prize-winning author Deborah Jones. The Granny is arty but forgetful, Red Riding Hood is fearful but feisty and the Wolf as dark and mysterious as his forest. Using a combination of marionettes and shadow puppets, this is a magical show that will enchant both children and adults alike.

The Butterfly's Spell

A young poet beetle falls in love with an injured butterfly, a creature from outside his own realm. The other insects around him are disturbed: some try to persuade him to be sensible and remain in his own sphere, but others realise that the need to follow one’s heart’s desire, into the imagination, may be the only way to freedom. Lorca’s first play is a symbolist masterpiece, exploring many of the characteristic themes, of forbidden love and the imminence of death, that infuse his later work.